Hiking the Cinque Terre Part I

We arrived at Cinque Terre on the north coast of Italy. This region was beautiful. There are five villages that are located along the coast, and to get from one to the next, one must hike, ferry, or train.

Wanting to experience the most of the region has to offer, we decided to hike our way around.

If you count from the east, we are staying in the fourth town, Vernazza. The village has one main street that runs from the top of the hill, where the train station is, and meanders through closely built three to four story buildings with colourful exteriors, eventually widens into a square that sits in a cove. 

This village was recently devastated by a mud slide that ruined most of the town, especially down the main stripe! But, somehow, the village persevered and restored most of the buildings. Although, here and there, you can still see the destruction caused by mother nature. 

We decided that hiking east on the first day would be best as we started making our way to Corniglia. The path are quite steep and varies in width from anywhere between a foot to 3-4 feet. You'd think the path would ease you into the steepness but then again starting out in a cove, the path just climbs. 

The paths are 5 Euros to hike for the day. I can imagine this brings in quite the revenue for the area considering the amount of tourists that visit on a daily basis! 

The views were amazing along the way. Definitely worth the hike. If you train, you'd miss out on a lot of the scenery and photo opportunities that you could not get by taking the train. 

Since we started our hike early, the sun was still bearable. The first hike took approximately an hour and a half when we arrived in Corniglia. 

The town sits on top of a mountain, the steep slope down are tiered with vineyards, producing local wine. The most popular, the Sciacchetra.

We got into town, walked around for a bit. Definitely wanted to check out the marina area down the steep slope, but when met with a billions stairs going down, we decided we were going to move onto the next village! LOL. What I did notice about this town was the colourful doors that each home had.

Our next hike was approximately two and a half hours, which took us inland. By now the sun was starting to burn a bit. The hike, like the first, was steep. This hike though had much more narrow steps and pathways. At one point it was one foot across with no barrier between myself and the free fall down hundreds of feet. To add to the stress, there were also constantly people hiking from the opposite direction. 

What's great though about hiking and the people on the hikes is that you end up chatting with people about their trip, experience, and journey. We met a couple of young girls from Edmonton who were hiking through the five villages. They had told us that the hike shouldn't be too bad, but boy were they wrong!

Our second hike of the day really took a lot our of us, and our knees. When arriving the Manarola from Corniglia, we had lunch and checked out the amazing swimming area. This marina looked like a natural water park!

After spending nearly four to five hours of hiking, we decided to train back to our base. 

THe later afternoon was perfect for a nap and to cap the day off, we had pizza at a local restaurant. 

More hiking tomorrow!!!